Hi there! Thanks for your time to read this article, it's great to see that you're looking into new careers! You may not know much about the Management Consultant career pathway, in fact you may have been matched to it having never heard of this before. This article will unravel what a Management Consultant is, and what they do to provide a better lay of the land of this pathway.
Give me a quick run-down?
Put simply, a Management Consultant provides solutions for business, financial, technological and organisational problems. Management consultants focus on helping leadership of an organisation improve overall performance and operations.
What do they do all day?
Well, we know they solve problems. Importantly, they are solving problems for their clients. Yep, companies pay for external consultants to solve their problems for them. This means that you need to provide value to your client by consulting in an area of expertise. For example, say you're a professional in Cyber Security, specialising in Governance, Risk and Compliance. As a Management Consultant, you will work as a member of your firm INSIDE your client's organisation to solve any problems they have relating to Cyber Governance, Risk and Compliance. This will include building business relationships with your client's stakeholders at a number of levels (executive, management and operators). You will collect and analyse relevant data relating to your speciality, and present your findings to decision makers within your client to help them improve efficiency, reduce cost, or increase revenue.
What skills and experience do I need?
It's actually quite simple. You need to be analytical and have exceptional communication skills. In WYWM terms, you should have high abstract reasoning and language comprehension. You should be high in openness, conscientiousness and extraversion. Ultimately, you need to be confident to give data-driven recommendations for business to adopt change.
Remember that as a Management Consultant, you need to provide expert recommendations and advice to stakeholders. This means that you need to have an underlying skill-set that you bring to the table that you're an expert in. Common areas of knowledge consulting firms look for are:
You do not need formal qualifications to be considered,
Where do they work?
Management Consultants will be familiar with the "Big 4" Consultancies: KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, EY. There are MANY other firms, large and small, that provide similar services. Competition is high in this game!
Management Consultant jobs will be located in large cities. Remember, consulting firms make money from providing expert advice to their clients, so they will strategically place offices in locations where their clients are.
What can I do to become more competitive?
You should check out our Data Analyst & Project Management pathways for all-round skills that will be useful for this career. You should also identify an area of strength that can be your area of expertise for you to consult in! Have you thought about becoming an RPA Consultant for example?
How do I apply?
Check out our jobs board or book a call with me to discuss jobs in this pathway!
Want to talk more? Book a call with me here